Oh Blizzard, how you have fallen (Diablo Immortal).

[Dhrizzle]

On the sliding scale of "actual video game" to "Mobile Dungeon Keeper", where does this fall? For all the people talking about it I haven't seen gameplay footage yet.

"Actual video game."

It's really fun and plays like Diablo-lite. You're doing the typical thing of moving around while using various abilities to smash hordes of enemies and the occasional big gribblies. I'm not a big fan of touch-screen controls but the game makes the most of it by allowing you to move with your left-thumb and aim with your right (very handy for AoE and movement abilities.) Kinda like a twin-stick shooter but with more sticks and you can't tell where the sticks are without looking and sometimes use the wrong spell.

I'm enjoying the story so far, some fun little nostalgia-bombs and a really cool moment where you relive the memory of Tal Rasha and Zoltan Kull imprisoning Baal in his soulstone.

It is dumbed down though, but personally I don't care as I can't play a mobile game the way I do a PC one. Exploration is minimal as zones are more linear and you have a footprint trail to follow. Most gear and gem upgrades are flagged with a little arrow and whichever you choose you get a trail again (for example if you see an item has an arrow clicking it might show the gems can be upgraded. Clicking the gem will give you a trail to the gem person.) Once you hit a certain point in each zone it opens up auto-navigate.

Core gameplay is simplified too. Most abilities are simply on a cooldown or have their own energy to draw from (I've only really played the barbarian though) and build variety is much more limited than I initially thought. Still there are fun things like unlocking the equivalent of glyphs by going through the challenge rifts and extracting legendary powers from items to use on others.

If you want a story that bridges Diablos 2 and 3 and to have fun killing monsters this game does a really good job of shrinking D3 down to a mobile device. If you're looking for some sort of digital skinner box that will provide you with regular hits of dopamine without having to pay out a shed-load of cash you might want to look elsewhere.

[Gaidax]

Would it have been any better if D3 was pay to win? PoE makes absolute peanuts (per customer or total, it's both pitiful) to what would be considered good OR EVEN ACCEPTABLE to a company like Blizzard. Things don't scale very well. Once the corporate bullshit seeps so deep into a company, it stops being enough and just keeps growing and growing, and is never about a good product anymore.

It's not black or white.

I am sure Blizzard is fully capable of figuring out the right balance of non-intrusive MTX and reasonable margin targets for business.

And I am sure they will do their best to figure out just that unless they want to turn D4 into a meme for the ages.

[Jerot]

And that's how it should be in f2p games. It cannot be any other way. Even if you can only buy cosmetics. The top cosmetics are whale only.

Name another game that has non-unique cosmetics for people who spend $50k on the game? Not market-set prices, straight player to developer fixed costs.

Or any other game that has single progression systems measured in decades.

it's bad game design and bad monetization. You look like a fool trying to say anything about this is reasonable or expected. P2W is one thing, but even the worst P2W games don't set things up on this scale.

[arkanon]

It's not black or white.

I am sure Blizzard is fully capable of figuring out the right balance of non-intrusive MTX and reasonable margin targets for business.

And I am sure they will do their best to figure out just that unless they want to turn D4 into a meme for the ages.

But this assumes they WANT to make a "reasonable" margin, and not the absolute highest margin they possibly can. Not once have i ever heard a business say "its ok, we are making enough, lets not try and make more money".

Can you imagine that meeting? "well boss, we COULD make $40,000,000 per period, but, i think $10,000,000 is enough, so lets reduce our margins".

Im not saying i agree with this, or that it doesnt frustrate me as well, but at the end of the day a business is there to make as much money as possible, not to be "fair and reasonable".

[NineSpine]

But this assumes they WANT to make a "reasonable" margin, and not the absolute highest margin they possibly can. Not once have i ever heard a business say "its ok, we are making enough, lets not try and make more money".

Can you imagine that meeting? "well boss, we COULD make $40,000,000 per period, but, i think $10,000,000 is enough, so lets reduce our margins".

Im not saying i agree with this, or that it doesnt frustrate me as well, but at the end of the day a business is there to make as much money as possible, not to be "fair and reasonable".

You are oversimplifying the issue.

The question is not maximizing profits. The question is the tradeoff. Blizzard is sacrificing reputation and their fanbase in exchange for short term profits. This could very easily come at the cost of long term profits. The prioritization of short term profits is a problematic aberration that has emerged recently as the norm. This is a response to the financialization of all of our industries, where we turn companies into complex financial instruments rather than firms that produce profit.

[arkanon]

You are oversimplifying the issue.

The question is not maximizing profits. .

Yes, it is. Thats it. You are over complicating the issue. Blizzard will keep doing this while making as much money as possible, adn the "community" will do nothing but continue to open their wallets. Just like EA. Just like Bathesda. Just like the majority of large game companies. Just like disney will keep spewing out hot garbage so long as people keep paying to see it. People think they have power, but they dont. Yes, they can choose not to partake, they can refuse to give the company money, but for every person stopping their $15 sub for wow, there is someone spending $10,000+ in Diablo.

Listen to what the experts are saying - the only way to stop this is regulation - this is because the "players" have proven time and time again they are incapable of banding together and saying "enough!" - they just keep paying. Blizzard do not care if its 1 million players paying $1 each, or 1 player paying $1m.

[chiddie]

Safe bet with blizzard, the only game that gets multiple content updates per year is Hearthstone, and its a genre that came with built-in paid gambling. WoW has gone more than a year without updates before and it's subscription based...

If anything DI is designed to go for long periods without updates because character progression is time gated over multiple decades. Even WoWs weekly lockouts and reward systems didn't take that long to progress through.

You're also assuming if things change they will get better (Adding more free sources of gear/materials) and not worse (Adding more things to buy).

Your whole argument boils down to we can't critique the game as it exists now because it could change. Pretty weak defense. You're basically saying we can't be critical of anything capable of changing. When the opposite is true, theres no point in arguing for changes to be made where no change is possible.



It's a game up until you run out of stuff to do at max level, then every meaningful progression system is daily/weekly/monthly capped unless you pull out a credit card. Buying progress in uncapped, and you can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars min-maxing one character.

Paragon level is tied to the servers progression, going above it gives diminishing returns until a whole days worth of grinding won't level you up. Ranking up your gear and finding better base pieces is locked behind paragon/hell level.

The only uncapped source of power is legendary gems and they can easily make your character twice as strong as someone who isn't as far along in gem progression.

It takes thousands of gems to upgrade through the ranks and it's nearly impossible to get higher rank gems as a free player. You'll get a handful a month, or you can spend $25 and run one 2-5 minute dungeon for several months worth of F2P progression all at once.

Once you max out a gem you have to spend money to awaken the piece of gear it's socketed into, which gives it up to 5 additional gem slots for bonus stats. This isn't available to free players.

Some content is locked behind becoming an immortal, which involves a bunch of PvP progression and fighting against players who are spending money to stay ahead of you. Making it extremely hard if not impossible to achieve as a F2P. Depending on the state of your server, which you cannot switch without rerolling. And everything you earn/buy is locked to one character.

The gameplay looks flashy and the controls on mobile are good. But its very shallow, you don't actually have to dodge those flashy boss attacks, you can AFK most fights. The rest of the game is basically just D3 but with caps. And bounties in a shared map where everyone is fighting for spawns.

Maybe it’s because I’m only 52 and DH is squishy but I can’t assure you that I die in seconds to ANY boss if I go afk.

[NineSpine]

Yes, it is. Thats it. You are over complicating the issue. Blizzard will keep doing this while making as much money as possible, adn the "community" will do nothing but continue to open their wallets. Just like EA. Just like Bathesda. Just like the majority of large game companies. Just like disney will keep spewing out hot garbage so long as people keep paying to see it. People think they have power, but they dont. Yes, they can choose not to partake, they can refuse to give the company money, but for every person stopping their $15 sub for wow, there is someone spending $10,000+ in Diablo.

Listen to what the experts are saying - the only way to stop this is regulation - this is because the "players" have proven time and time again they are incapable of banding together and saying "enough!" - they just keep paying.

The only way to stop this is with regulation, I agree. But that doesn't change anything I said. These companies very frequently drive themselves into the ground with greed by sacrificing long term health for short term profits. These things don't work in the long run. They just don't care that they don't.

And movie-goers don't go see shitty superhero movies. Do you think it's a coincidence that Sony's movies keep flopping but Disney's kill it? Because Marvel has done a good job. They prioritized long term health in the MCU by taking their time to get to The Avengers. The DC universe fell apart because they rushed it for short term profits.

[Kyanion]

snip

I mean you are arguing with someone who said:

There's no gambling in Diablo Immortal.

so it is pretty pointless when they say nonsense like that.

[arkanon]

The only way to stop this is with regulation, I agree. But that doesn't change anything I said. These companies very frequently drive themselves into the ground with greed by sacrificing long term health for short term profits. These things don't work in the long run. They just don't care that they don't.

And movie-goers don't go see shitty superhero movies. Do you think it's a coincidence that Sony's movies keep flopping but Disney's kill it? Because Marvel has done a good job. They prioritized long term health in the MCU by taking their time to get to The Avengers. The DC universe fell apart because they rushed it for short term profits.

You are right, the dark knight trilogy was terrible and killed DC....As did The Batman.....Very unpopular movies for sure.

Anyway, the thing you said that i consider wrong is that these companies fail all the time due to greed, and that they care about "long term" or "reputation". They care about profits. And although there is growing rage at various companies, there are more than enough people willing to look past it all and pour money into their pockets. Think of it this way - people wouldnt care about P2W mechanics and aggressive MTX if few to none partook in such purchases. The problem is so, so many people do, and to such an extreme extent that it alters the balance of the game itself.

I honestly cant think of a single major company in the gaming industry that failed due to greed / mtx. Some might slip a little, but are generally just gobbled up by a larger company who has as bad or worse mtx. If they announced a battlefront 3 tomorrow, with the same MTX as BF2, if would still sell massively and make them a lot of money. Its like "gamers" just cant help themselves. I remember my own situation with this, but long before MTX had invaded PC gaming to any meaningful extent. A LONG time ago i was trying to level an alt on a new server in wow. I wanted my proffs to level with me, rather than an afterthought. I had 10k gold, and SWORE i would spend 1k on mats to level profs as far as i could, then farm the rest / wait until i had more gold. Then it started - "well, i only need two more stacks of silk, its not THAT bad - it will unlock some new recipes and i can stop there"..............fall short of the next tier by 1 skill point......."ok ill just guy 2 more stacks, that will be enough" i get my levels. "hey that looks pretty sweet, might as well transmog that! - shit, i need more mats to craft it, and i guess i might as well do the whole set for xmog, then ill stop".............*a few hours later*............"oh shit, i only have 900g left - wtf?"

[NineSpine]

You are right, the dark knight trilogy was terrible and killed DC....As did The Batman.....Very unpopular movies for sure.

None of that was part of DCs shared universe where they attempted to mimic the MCU. The shared universe was Superman, Batman v Superman, Justice League, etc.. They abandoned the model entirely because of how poorly it went. Now, the DC movies are not a coherent shared universe. It's just random movies based on DC properties. The reason it went poorly is because they rushed to the big team up movies before ever establishing a universe of characters.

Anyway, the thing you said that i consider wrong is that these companies fail all the time due to greed, and that they care about "long term" or "reputation". They care about profits. And although there is growing rage at various companies, there are more than enough people willing to look past it all and pour money into their pockets. Think of it this way - people wouldnt care about P2W mechanics and aggressive MTX if few to none partook in such purchases. The problem is so, so many people do, and to such an extreme extent that it alters the balance of the game itself.

I honestly cant think of a single major company in the gaming industry that failed due to greed / mtx. Some might slip a little, but are generally just gobbled up by a larger company who has as bad or worse mtx. If they announced a battlefront 3 tomorrow, with the same MTX as BF2, if would still sell massively and make them a lot of money. Its like "gamers" just cant help themselves. I remember my own situation with this, but long before MTX had invaded PC gaming to any meaningful extent. A LONG time ago i was trying to level an alt on a new server in wow. I wanted my proffs to level with me, rather than an afterthought. I had 10k gold, and SWORE i would spend 1k on mats to level profs as far as i could, then farm the rest / wait until i had more gold. Then it started - "well, i only need two more stacks of silk, its not THAT bad - it will unlock some new recipes and i can stop there"..............fall short of the next tier by 1 skill point......."ok ill just guy 2 more stacks, that will be enough" i get my levels. "hey that looks pretty sweet, might as well transmog that! - shit, i need more mats to craft it, and i guess i might as well do the whole set for xmog, then ill stop".............*a few hours later*............"oh shit, i only have 900g left - wtf?"

It's like you are working hard to misunderstand me and not get the point. Companies used to primarily concern themselves with their LONG TERM health. This was because the people that owned the company generally intended to own the company for a long time, even when it was public. In the 70s, there was a marked shift to turn companies into complex financial instruments rather than profit generating firms. This change made it the norm to buy and sell more frequently, and to concern yourself primarily with manipulated stock values rather than realistic chances of paying out dividends.

For example, stock buybacks were extremely uncommon back in the day, because a stock buyback ultimately does very little in most cases for the long term health of the company. However, now they are extremely common, because a buyback artificially inflates the value of a stock for a limited time. What do the C levels usually get primarily paid in? Stock. It used to be the law that when you were paid in stock you had to hold onto it for a long period of time afterward, in order to discourage artificially manipulating the value of the stock for short term gains. That all went out the window. Now, if you are a CEO, in many cases the best way to make lots of money is to manipulate the value of the stock so that as you get paid with stock you can sell it off. The law has also made it so that what should happen in that case, which is shareholder revolt, is extremely unlikely. For one, massive amounts of most major company stock is held by an entity unlikely to do anything, commonly some entity that is transitory and only holding the stock temporarily. For another, the legal standard has gotten to the point that you basically need the CEO on video confessing that he manipulated the stock on purpose and also murders babies and kicks puppies.

If you want an example of a company that shit the bed because of this, that company os Toys R Us. They still had a 30% share of the US toy market and were profitable... but only once you excluded the massive "consulting fees" the private equity that bought them was paying themselves while they ran Toys R Us into debt. Instead of concerning themselves with something like selling toys to generate profit, they concerned themselves with leveraging the company for loans that they could pay to themselves. That is what happens when companies become complex financial instruments rather than profit producing firms. This drove Toys R Us into the ground, but the investors walked away with full pockets.

[Gaidax]

I mean you are arguing with someone who said:

so it is pretty pointless when they say nonsense like that.

That's why I stopped arguing and just blocked the guy.

He's either trolling or just some sort of getting off being a contrarian and a "rebel".

I am all for saying that D:I has some good points when it comes to gameplay and game modes, but shit... there is absolutely 0 anything good or humane about its MTX scheme - it's a completely shameless cashgrab without any care for the IP and community or any restraint.

It's beyond me, seeing people who defend that piece of shit - it's either they are some sort of trolls looking to gaslight and bait people or some useful idiots that truly believe in their BS and are simply too far gone and way in over their heads.

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Listen to what the experts are saying - the only way to stop this is regulation - this is because the "players" have proven time and time again they are incapable of banding together and saying "enough!" - they just keep paying. Blizzard do not care if its 1 million players paying $1 each, or 1 player paying $1m.

This is true, that's why every time I see these infantile people who think their forum or reddit "threats" about how they are not going to buy and how they think people are not going to buy into all that BS - I laugh out loud, just like Bobby does now counting all that D:I cash.

It is plain and simple as day that as long as there is no law to stop this shit - it will continue.

And with how long it takes to legislate such things on top of various lobbyists dragging it sideways, you can bet that by the time they finally get onto it like in Belgium and NL, these companies will figure out 100 other different ways to do just the same while technically complying with whatever outdated regulation there will be.

And various morons here and there who bash NL and Belgium for restricting their freedumbs certainly not helping there either.

[chiddie]

I'm at paragon 27. Still just empowered battle pass is the only thing I bought. I did luck into a decent gem (3/5 Howler's Call) but I can't say it does THAT much damage.
I am always on the higher end of leaderboards for challenge rifts. In battlegrounds I am usually top 3 (was MVP three times in a row today). Yes whales have an advantage but so far it does not seem insurmountable. Now I will be going Hell 2 this weekend most likely (I average 2,5 levels per day) so I'll see how different things are when you get there.
I'd say the endgame loop is strictly better than D3. There is much more variety in meaningful activities. If this had been a second xpac for D3 and did not have this aggressive monetization (a battle pass would be ok) I think I'd probably shift most of my WoW time to that game. It's sad because the game is actually great and would have been so much greater if there was some reasonable path to grinding for 5 star gems and awakening was not at rank 10.

DI is not meant to be grind 24/7 like Diablo 2R/3.

It’s way more casual (I’m still 52, don’t even know if I’ll be able to get to 60 by next weekly reset). And you are not supposed to compensate shop purchases with massive grind, else given the type of game and the nolifers attached to these types of games, purchases would have way less value.

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That's why I stopped arguing and just blocked the guy.

He's either trolling or just some sort of getting off being a contrarian and a "rebel".

I am all for saying that D:I has some good points when it comes to gameplay and game modes, but shit... there is absolutely 0 anything good or humane about its MTX scheme - it's a completely shameless cashgrab without any care for the IP and community or any restraint.

It's beyond me, seeing people who defend that piece of shit - it's either they are some sort of trolls looking to gaslight and bait people or some useful idiots that truly believe in their BS and are simply too far gone and way in over their heads.

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This is true, that's why every time I see these infantile people who think their forum or reddit "threats" about how they are not going to buy and how they think people are not going to buy into all that BS - I laugh out loud, just like Bobby does now counting all that D:I cash.

It is plain and simple as day that as long as there is no law to stop this shit - it will continue.

And with how long it takes to legislate such things on top of various lobbyists dragging it sideways, you can bet that by the time they finally get onto it like in Belgium and NL, these companies will figure out 100 other different ways to do just the same while technically complying with whatever outdated regulation there will be.

And various morons here and there who bash NL and Belgium for restricting their freedumbs certainly not helping there either.

As long as it’s not a lottery and you know what you’ll get before purchasing (with % chances clearly written) i don’t really see how you can legislate this.

Should mtx be illegal tout court regardless the type? I don’t think so.

[Nymrohd]

DI is not meant to be grind 24/7 like Diablo 2R/3.

It’s way more casual (I’m still 52, don’t even know if I’ll be able to get to 60 by next weekly reset). And you are not supposed to compensate shop purchases with massive grind, else given the type of game and the nolifers attached to these types of games, purchases would have way less value.

Pretty much. And really, doing all the daily activities and hitting the different daily hidden caps will still take you a good 2-3 hours. And you can still meaningfully grind in the world (30 Monster Essences) for a good while longer.

If you are trying to spend all your extra time in this game then and only then will you run out of things to do.

[Gaidax]

As long as it’s not a lottery and you know what you’ll get before purchasing (with % chances clearly written) i don’t really see how you can legislate this.

Should mtx be illegal tout court regardless the type? I don’t think so.

The same way NL and Belgium do, which is why D:I is not there.

Their regulations are broad enough for companies not willing to risk it and it seems effective enough, seeing this shit steers clear off these countries even if the regulation is not fitting like a glove to the case.

[Nymrohd]

The same way NL and Belgium do, which is why D:I is not there.

Their regulations are broad enough for companies not willing to risk it and it seems effective enough, seeing this shit steers clear off these countries even if the regulation is not fitting like a glove to the case.

Honestly I'm unsure how it doesn't meat those regulations either. They probably just don't want to risk it. The part of the game that is gambling does have % chances clearly written (elder crests). There are some things that are not made perfectly clear though so maybe it's that.

[arkanon]

This is true, that's why every time I see these infantile people who think their forum or reddit "threats" about how they are not going to buy and how they think people are not going to buy into all that BS - I laugh out loud, just like Bobby does now counting all that D:I cash.

It is plain and simple as day that as long as there is no law to stop this shit - it will continue.

And with how long it takes to legislate such things on top of various lobbyists dragging it sideways, you can bet that by the time they finally get onto it like in Belgium and NL, these companies will figure out 100 other different ways to do just the same while technically complying with whatever outdated regulation there will be.

And various morons here and there who bash NL and Belgium for restricting their freedumbs certainly not helping there either.

Yeah the truth is that is the ONLY reason rifts exist - and why they are a 3 minute waste of time - its only there to create a "gameplay" step between the purchase and the loot, to avoid gambling laws. It honestly makes me equal parts sad and angry that people defend this kind of shit, and openly spend THOUSANDS of dollars for what equates to a grossly watered down D3. Obviously those playing on mobile dont have a d3 option, but if being mobile/handheld is a priority, buy D3 AND D2R on switch for like $40 and get thousands of hours of game play with no P2W at all.

I dont actually HATE the gameplay of D:I. I played a bit, mostly pc but dabbled on my phone when bored or shitting, and its ok. I would probably have paid around $30 or more if it was one purchase for both pc and mobile, and played it randomly at the beach house, during power cuts, on the shitter, traveling for work etc etc etc. Its not THAT bad, but sadly, "not that bad" is the new blizzard standard.

[Elim Garak]

It's astounding how people want their government to dictate how games should be made. The best game designers are in the government!

[Gaidax]

They probably just don't want to risk it.

That's the point and apparently that's good enough already. It shows that even if regulation is not 100% matching the case, it can still be effective at holding this shit at bay simply because the risk to get fucked is there.

[arkanon]

Honestly I'm unsure how it doesn't meat those regulations either. They probably just don't want to risk it. The part of the game that is gambling does have % chances clearly written (elder crests). There are some things that are not made perfectly clear though so maybe it's that.

There are a LOT of things not clear - there are countless MTX that only become available when you have made other MTX purchases, and the drop chance of everything needs to be displayed in game, not just figured out by mathmagicians.

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It's astounding how people want their government to dictate how games should be made. The best game designers are in the government!

We are not asking governments to design the games, what an entirely disingenuous thing to say. People always cry on about wanting a totally free market, until they have to pay $25/L for gas, $700/month for power, and one company is able to take complete control of a market and charge $27,000 for a phone. Some want them to investigate the harmful, predatory, and addictive nature of modern game monetization, just like they investigate dodgy loansharks charging 900% interest on a loan, or a builder charging a 78yo widow $300,000 to build a 10m2 deck. The problem isnt that there are MTX in games, the problem is it is eseentially just another form of slot machine, gambling, but it is not regulated.

You do understand most other forms of gambling are regulated by a governing body, right? THATS what people are asking for, not the government to control what games are made, or as you very foolishly claimed, design the games themselves. Truth is, i dont even care if a game wants to be egregiously P2W - i wouldnt personally play that game, but i dont care if they exist. But it needs to be made very clear thats what the game is - and lootboxes dont bother me either, BUT, percentages and droprates need to be clearly displayed and available to view in game, in the same menu as the loot box itself, not hidden away in some readme.txt file, or like many games, not at all.